


Beyond My Reach

by HollowMashiro



Category: Room of Swords (Webcomic)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24184909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollowMashiro/pseuds/HollowMashiro
Summary: The Room of Swords has been conquered. Everyone has been freed. No one is quite back home, but... at least they've all been reborn together, in the same time, with a clean slate.But there are... remnants of their pasts that seep through. Connected by past experiences in the black box, Gyrus and Kodya face greater problems than most.
Relationships: Gyrus Axelei/Kodya Karevic
Comments: 5
Kudos: 63





	Beyond My Reach

“Just letting you know, I’m getting off shift soon, so one of my coworkers will be bringing your food out. That alright?”

“Yeah, it’s no problem.”

“Alright then. What’ll you have?”

Gyrus orders his food a little absentmindedly, half his mind focused on his advanced engineering homework he’s pulled out on the table. He’d decided on a whim to try this small café that was on the route between his apartment and main campus as he was walking home, too jittery to concentrate in the library. The European-style café has a good ambiance, a quiet and warm refuge from the cold and snow outside, and whatever is producing the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen promises to be far healthier than anything Gyrus has on hand at home. Maybe a good meal will help him concentrate.

Gyrus finishes the current problem with a soft sigh and rubs the skin between his eyes to release some of the tension. He quickly checks over his equations and proofs and then frowns; something isn’t quite right…

His methods are fine, his math, his proofs… Everything looks fine…

Except he’s completed the problem with parameters for a material that doesn’t exist.

Gyrus suppresses the urge to bang his head on the table. Fixing this will be simple; all he has to do is substitute in the right numbers and redo his calculations. But this isn’t the first time this has happened, and the fact that it _keeps_ happening is annoying, especially since it’s slowly gotten more frequent as he’s gotten older. Damn it, he needs to stop letting his imagination go wild when he’s not paying attention; some of the nonsense he absentmindedly spits out doesn’t even follow the laws of physics, as they are currently understood.

But sometimes, if he’s _really_ distracted, it feels like the explanations to the too-tough, too-flexible materials he sometimes imagines, or the frighteningly advanced robotics and programming, are _right there_ , right at the tip of his tongue, but he can’t access them, and the feeling of _I know this_ soon fades. It’s _extremely_ frustrating. He can’t even talk to anyone about it, either, because without anything solid he could show as proof, he’d just sound crazy.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gyrus sees a server approaching with his meal. Desperate for a break and some food, Gyrus eagerly reaches forward to take the plate and then thank the server. Their bare fingers brush as Gyrus grasps the plate.

It’s such an ordinary occurrence that Gyrus is taken completely off-guard by a feeling like lightning that sears through his body from the point of contact. His vision whites out, and thunder booms in his ears. It’s an intensity that overlaps into pain, like something that had been sleeping or disabled for a long time is just now waking up violently, all at once.

When Gyrus comes to, his entire body aches, and he’s slumped awkwardly between the table and the chair, just barely avoiding the mess of spilled food scattered on the table. His ears are ringing, and the panicked voice of the café owner sounds distant and muffled. The sensation has settled down somewhat, enough that Gyrus can think around it a little. Now it’s something white-hot, an insistent pull towards someone he _needs_ to find—

Oh, _fuck_ , Gyrus knows _exactly_ what this is. Dusty childhood memories resurface—

—Gyrus insisting, as a toddler, that he needed to find someone, because there was a tug on his heart and he needed to follow it, and his parents smiling like _aww, isn’t he cute with his imaginary friend_ —

—the smiles become duller when this determination only burns brighter as Gyrus grows older, from a toddler to a child—

—Gyrus persisting in the face of mocking from other children, furious and hurting badly enough that he teaches himself Russian ( _Russian, why Russian?_ ) because one day the realization hits that he’s being pulled from far away, as far as India or China or Japan or Russia ( _Russia, Russia sounds right, I’d better learn the language so I can talk with_ —)—

—his parents are impressed by the language and how fast he’s picking up his schoolwork, but they’re less than impressed by his reasoning, and they finally decide to take him to Russia because this has to stop—

—Gyrus being so, so excited to meet—

—the last day of the vacation; Gyrus can feel his soulmate (that’s the word he settled on) getting close, and he runs from his parents without warning—

—he finds the place, crowded with people; the tugging is so strong, like his soulmate is _right there_ ; surely that person can feel him too. He follows—

—but his parents catch up with him, holding him fast and berating him for running off like that, but Gyrus doesn’t care because it feels like his soulmate is getting more distant – why?—

—despondence on the plane ride home; Gyrus is inconsolable for weeks—

—his parents enrolling him in a mental health program, because something isn’t right and they’re worried—

—Gyrus is diagnosed as psychotic; his belief of having a link to his soulmate labeled as a delusion—

—the side-effects of the antipsychotics are terrible, but between them and the therapy ( _it isn’t normal to feel these things at your age; it’s impacting your well-being; don’t you want to focus on something else?_ )—

— _if this soulmate existed, why weren’t they there?_ betrayal, grief, acceptance—

—the urges fade completely by the time he hits adolescence, and he forgets them between acing his schoolwork and devouring information on astronomy and engineering because he finds he _really_ wants to be an astronaut, now that he’s not distracted by other things—

Gyrus is trembling, his hands buried in his hair as he desperately tries to get the urge to _stop_. He absolutely does not want to return to that time when he was too distracted chasing after something that didn’t exist to really live life and reach his potential. He’s one of the top engineering students in the country, already holding a handful of patents for some breakthrough innovations without even an undergraduate degree yet. He’s got a good shot at getting to space. He _refuses_ to ruin himself chasing a nonexistent fantasy.

It’s with this thought that Gyrus shakily rises from the table. Forces his unwilling feet to take one step away, another and another. Doesn’t even grab his stuff. Doesn’t pay any attention to the café staff trying to get his attention. Doesn’t pay any attention to the server who was quivering on the ground, who is now trying to stumble to their feet, whose features Gyrus hadn’t paid any attention to earlier.

Gyrus flees, straining against every fiber of his body that’s screaming to turn around, because what he wants is _right there_. He flees, and it hurts.

* * *

Kodya gasps for breath, trying to force his trembling limbs to cooperate. His entire body feels like it’s been electrified, tingly and aching. There’s a fiery anchor in his chest tugging him forward, forward, forward towards the customer that just fled, and Kodya is helpless to resist it. The feeling grows ever more painful as Kodya fights to coordinate his uncooperative limbs and chase after the person who just fled, regardless of the concerned hovering and questions of his colleagues.

Kodya just needs to go _now_. Everything else is secondary. Because he knows what this is; he remembers—

—a _moment_ when he was a young child – between one breath and the next, there is a sudden _awareness_ of _other_ ; something has just emerged that Kodya _needs to find_ —

—Kodya can never find it, no matter where he looks; it feels so far away—

—he never mentions this constant feeling to anyone; his family already has enough troubles as it is—

—god, if only Kodya can bring in enough money for his family, maybe he can spend less time worrying about what they’re going to eat that night and more time looking for whatever is pulling him incessantly, so far away—

—he teaches himself English; better English can land him better work, and it comes easily for some reason, like there’s something related to the tugging in his heart that _makes_ it easy—

—Kodya grows older, gets more reckless, because damn it, he’s searched everywhere he can locally without any money; trains and buses and planes cost _money_ and he needs more of it to feed his growing frame, to find where the pull in his heart is leading him—

—shit, shit, he can’t afford to get involved with the Bratva, but the money is good enough he can’t afford to _not_ get involved with the Bratva—

—he’s not _really_ a part of the Bratva, Kodya thinks. He’s just barely starting puberty; he’s not even considered within the official structure, or doing official tasks. He’s just an errand boy for the higher ups, because everyone needs to eat. And if they ask him to occasionally slip small packages into tiny, hard-to-reach spots, he doesn’t ask, they don’t tell, and the pay is good enough that the burden on Kodya’s family eases, he can buy some live chickens to help feed them, and he can even start saving a little money for later—

—Kodya wakes up in the middle of the night once, when he’s fourteen, because the _something_ he’s looking for is rocketing closer, getting so close Kodya can almost taste it, his _something_ that was so, so far away is now in Russia—

—after an agitated few days, Kodya feels that his something is _here_ , within the city, and Kodya ignores all his obligations to go running after what he’s looking for, following the tug at his heart. He almost reaches what he’s looking for, but just as he’s about to finally be _home safe warm together_ a Bratva member yanks him away, demanding to know what he’s doing, why he isn’t doing his assigned grocery run, is he trying to steal their money—

—Kodya yanks at his arm as he’s forcefully dragged away, every inch of space he can feel growing between himself and the other feeling like a gaping chasm. To his dismay, he starts to cry, babbling about the star his soul is attached to, he needs to _find that person_ —

—it’s far too late, the gap between them yawns wide when he’s brought in front of his Bratva officer, shuddering with despair. They call him soul-sick and eject him. He’s threatened with terrible things to himself and his family if talks to anyone about them, even though he barely knows anything. Between that and his age, he’s spared from being killed—

—Kodya is inconsolable as he feels the link wane and finally vanish over the next months and years. But at least his family is in a better situation, and when Kodya gets a job a couple years later as a store clerk, he’s at least able to save some more money, and he’s left alone by the Bratva—

—Kodya wonders if his desperate attempts to find the source of the tugging meant he was crazy, now that it’s gone. But even so, there’s a gaping hole in his life; what does he do, now that his ultimate goal is gone—

—he finds solace in archery. There’s a traditional range near his school that offers steep discounts to students. Kodya isn’t quite sure what brings him here but he finds it soothing, and he finds he’s uncannily good at it. But he still can’t figure out what he wants with his life—

—Kodya figures it out while he’s in the Russian army, conscripted at eighteen for a year of service. He still wants to _know_ why he’d experienced such things as a child. He’s certain that the other person lived in the United States, at least when he could feel the tugging in his heart, so he decides to apply for American schools once his year has elapsed; a degree from an American university would carry significant weight in any case—

—he’s going to America. All the little precious money he saved over the years from the Bratva and the store and the army is going towards this move, for the plane ticket and initial living expenses. He’s doesn’t think he could have made it if he hadn’t gotten a full ride from the university—

—Kodya works hard in his classes and at the two part-time jobs he manages to land. He slowly works over the years towards the dual degree he’s decided on. He wants to stay like this forever, he’s never felt more comfortable with himself or freer, his half-baked idea to find the source of his childhood longing fading and becoming less important—

But now that longing is back, stronger than ever. Time had dulled his memories, but Kodya is abruptly reminded why he’d been so desperate to follow his heart. It keens frantically as the _other_ stumbles away, clumsily fleeing the café before Kodya can get his feet underneath him. Kodya cannot resist the tether in his heart pulling him forward. More importantly, he doesn’t want to; long-buried excitement and determination burst forth and give him the strength to _move_ as he pushes aside his coworkers and gives chase.

_I’m not letting you get away this time._

Kodya shoves the café door open and hurdles down the steps. He doesn’t have to look far. The tugging is leading him to a person not too far away who is facing away from him, frozen and shaking in place.

Kodya dashes forward, full speed, and his desperate momentum as he slams into the other knocks them both to the ground.

* * *

Gyrus barely feels it when he hits the sidewalk. The instant his not-soulmate forcefully collides with him, his entire body feels like it’s filled with light and warmth and comfort. His soul feels like it’s singing as an emptiness he’d never really noticed is filled. The terrible, unrelenting wrench on his mind and body, which had grown strong enough to stop him in his tracks despite his resistance, is wiped away with a wave of _found here home_. Gyrus thoughtlessly, greedily pushes back into the other person, clinging to every scrap of contact he can muster. Something fragile is growing between them, woven of gossamer strands, and as it strengthens, it feels almost as though scabs and holes and festering wounds in his soul are being soothed.

Nothing has ever felt so good or so _right_ to Gyrus.

But the euphoria is fading as Gyrus adjusts to the sensations. He blinks snow from his eyes, flat flakes lazily drifting to settle as a light coating on Gyrus and the sidewalk. His mind struggles to reboot as he tries to comprehend what he just experienced. What he’s still _currently_ experiencing. It takes a few more heartbeats for memory and thought to come forth, to integrate correctly, but finally—

This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, _wrong!_

Visions of psychiatric wards flit through his mind as his dreams of being an astronaut seem to vanish into smoke, along with his sanity. Gyrus makes a distressed noise, between a moan and a choke, and tries again to move away, even though his heart cries out for him to stop and stay.

He doesn’t get very far at all. The arms that are wrapped around him tighten, pressing him back against someone’s chest. “Can’t run from me this time. I won’t let you,” a masculine voice breathes against Gyrus’s neck, sending pleasurable shivers and tingles down his spine from the sound and proximity.

Gyrus grits his teeth, ignoring the way his body and the imaginary thing between them are reacting, and manages to reply, “Please… please let me go.” He sounds terribly strained.

“No way,” the other man snaps, hooking a leg over Gyrus’s and pinning him in place even more thoroughly. “After all this time, you’d think I’d just let you go?”

“It’s… this—” Gyrus swallows, because even acknowledging the existence of what he’s feeling seems like a terrible concession. “It’s not real,” he whispers. “Not real, not real, not real…”

The other man squeezes him almost painfully tightly. “You don’t get to say that,” he hisses. “Not after everything I endured trying to find you.”

“You weren’t there!” Gyrus wails piteously, his defenses breaking. “I was so close to finding you once, but you _weren’t there_ , and I spent the next three years poked and prodded by psychologists and neurologists because it’s all just a _delusion_ with some somatic symptoms, it’s just _psychosis_ , I’m _never_ going to get to space at this rate—!” Gyrus realizes, to his horror, that he’s shuddering and crying.

The man lightly nuzzles his neck, feelings of comfort and sorrow twanging down the stupid, impossible thing they share. “I’m so sorry,” he says mournfully. “I tried to be there that day. I really did. I would have been there, if I hadn’t been held up against my will.”

“You don’t even know where _there_ is, because we’re both insane, and you need to let go of me so I can try to piece my life back together again,” Gyrus snaps, hiccupping as he forcefully clamps down on his crying. He tries to yank himself away from the other man unsuccessfully.

“Moscow,” the man says as Gyrus freezes. “The Red Square, in the afternoon, in the middle of summer, exactly a decade ago. You were there, weren’t you? I felt it, you were so close…”

“How did you…?” Gyrus croaks, his body stiff. “I— have you been stalking me or something? Is that why you know about that?” There are pictures and records of all his vacations online, he knows, but for this man to choose _that_ vacation at _that_ time…

“No!” the man exclaims, sounding hurt. Gyrus flinches as dissonance reaches across the delusionary thing they share. “Why are you fighting this so hard…? I’ve wanted to find you for so long…”

“Because it’s brought me nothing but misery!” Gyrus snaps, struggling once more. “Look, I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but you’re not helping my psychosis right now, so just _go away!_ ”

“No,” he replies firmly. “What would it take to believe you’re not crazy?”

“Nothing,” Gyrus replies cantankerously, settling back into the unnervingly comfortable warmth of the other’s arms as he fails to break free again. After a moment, he replies, “Fine. You really think we’re connected by some – some kind of metaphysical chain? That we’re not just both insane? Prove it.”

Gyrus hears the man shift behind him. There’s silence as the man thinks. Gyrus pointedly ignores the feeling of the imaginary thing between them continuing to weave itself together, stronger and more complex. He’s just glad it’s too cold for many people to be out in this area, so no one has seen the two of them sprawled out on the ground enacting this crazy drama.

Just as Gyrus is about to try his luck escaping again, the man says, “You know things, don’t you?”

“What?” Gyrus replies, startled.

“You know things you shouldn’t, or have a talent you shouldn’t…” the man says quietly.

Gyrus rolls his eyes. It’s vague enough to belong on a fortune cookie.

“You know impossible things,” the man continues. “But you can’t access them, can’t you? And it frustrates you, because the impossible things you know conflict with the possible things you know.”

“Is that supposed to mean anything to me?” Gyrus says irritably. “Let go of me.”

“It’s physics, isn’t it?” the man says. “Like, materials that don’t work the way we understand, or tools that are decades or even centuries ahead. And it feels like you’ve just somehow forgotten it all, which is frustrating to you, because you could achieve your goals easily if you could just remember. Right?”

Gyrus is completely still, shocked into stillness and silence. “That’s impossible,” he rasps. “You _can’t_ know that!” He’s frantically trying to think of an explanation that makes sense, that _doesn’t_ involve accepting what was labelled as psychosis years ago is real. He doesn’t even notice when the man slips an arm off of him to grab something before draping the arm back over him again.

“Hey,” the man says quietly, shaking his hand in front of Gyrus’s face to draw attention to it. His hand is clenched around something; Gyrus can see plastic corners peeking from between his fingers. “This is my nametag. What’s on it?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Gyrus replies, shaken. “Sorry, but I wasn’t paying attention earlier.”

Gyrus feels the man shake his head. “No. You know what’s on it anyway, don’t you? Tell me what my name is, and I’ll let you go.”

Gyrus sighs. “Fine.” How is he supposed to guess this? There are dozens of common male names, thousands more uncommon like his own, and tens of thousands international. He has no way of knowing, even though he’s already thinking of names that he knows, trying to pick out one that fits…

None of them do, Gyrus thinks in frustration, unconsciously leaning into the other man, who is waiting patiently for his answer. Gyrus ignores the way it feels like the nonexistent thing between them ripples and twitches.

“Well?” the man asks. Maybe not so patiently.

Gyrus bites his lip and sighs before replying, “Kodya.” Wait, that hadn’t been what he’d meant to say! It somehow _sounds_ right, but he hadn’t been thinking of Russian names; he’d meant to say ‘Kevin,’ or—

The man flips his nametag around. There’s enough light from the nearby streetlamp that Gyrus can make out the K-O-D-Y-A inscribed on the surface.

Gyrus trembles. “I… t-that’s…” It can’t be possible. It flies in the face of everything he’s learned and endured since childhood. There _has_ to be some other reason, otherwise… otherwise…

Kodya drops his nametag in favor of clutching Gyrus’s shirt and pulling them flush together for a full-body hug. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here now. I’m not letting you go,” he murmurs. “ _Gyrus_.”

Gyrus shudders at the sound of his name, coming from that voice. He feels completely vulnerable, stripped of all defenses, as he feels something – energy or feeling or _whatever_ – flowing between him and Kodya, now that he’s paying attention. Now that he’s not actively impeding it, or whatever he was doing before. It’s warm and comfortable.

Gyrus can’t deny it anymore. There’s certainly _something_ between them. “What am I supposed to do now?” he moans, clutching at his hair. The part of him that’s a soulmate-obsessed kid, the part Gyrus thought had been killed with the antipsychotics, is gleeful about the new developments, but the rest of him – the dutiful son, the prodigious student, the aspiring astronaut – is considerably less enthused. How is he supposed to achieve his dreams with a leash around his neck?

“We’ll figure it out,” Kodya says. “We’re in this together. Now that I’ve finally found you… I feel like there’s nothing we can’t handle.”

Gyrus whimpers. After a moment, he begins to move. Kodya tightens his grip for a moment, but relaxes once he realizes Gyrus just wants to turn around and not run. Somehow, Gyrus is unsurprised by the features that greet him. The brown hair and blue eyes feel familiar… and so, so dear to him. Gyrus buries his face in Kodya’s chest and just _breathes_ as he tries not to cry again, even though it feels like his entire world has been upended. Kodya murmurs reassurances into his hair, but it’s his scent that feels most soothing.

Finally, Gyrus pulls back, drained. He says, weakly, “Can… can we go back to the café? I’m getting cold, and sooner or later someone’s gonna trip over us…”

“Of course,” Kodya replies. He sits and then stands before hauling Gyrus up after him. As he brushes accumulated snow from the both of them, he continues, “Let’s talk more there, okay? I think there’s a lot we need to talk about.”

“Yeah,” Gyrus says dully, feeling completely drained already. “Your boss isn’t gonna be mad about you running off?”

Kodya shakes his head. “It’s been a pretty slow night. I’ll just say it’s a personal matter…”

Gyrus leans against Kodya as they begin to walk back. It’s not far, but Gyrus is pathetically grateful for the reassurance anyway. Fraught as the night has been, any comfort is welcome.

As they make it back to the café, Gyrus notices something along the link they share. It’s nothing visible, but Gyrus almost imagines it as a golden color anyway. He basks in it as Kodya ushers them through the door and they’re greeted by the concerned queries of Kodya’s coworkers. Gyrus finally realizes, as they’re seated at a booth, that it’s hope.

Nothing is for certain, but he thinks… they’ll be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this was meant to be a Valentine's fic. At least it's coming out on a 14th?
> 
> This works as a standalone. However, I do have enough ideas and material that it could be turned into a multi-chapter fic. Given that I have too many other projects on my plate, however, I'm not going to pursue it as something multi-chapter, unless someone wants to adopt it.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


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